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The Hay-Pauncefote Treaty 

AND 

The Panama Canal 



SAMUEL L. PARRISH 



The Hay-Pauncefote Treat y 

AND 

The Panama Canal 

THE UNITED STATES IS IN JUSTICE BOUND EITHER TO REPEAL, 

AMEND TO SATISFY GREAT BRITAIN, OR ARBITRATE 

THE CANAL TOLLS ACT, 



New York, 
25 Broad Street, 
January 20, 1913. 
TO THE MEMBERS OF 

THE UNITED STATES SENATE, 

WASHINGTON, D. C. : 

In considering the present relations of the United 
States and Great Britain, and the unfortunate complica- 
tions which have arisen from the divergent interpretations 
placed by the governments of the two countries upon the 
provisions of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty as affecting the 
Panama Canal, the following historical international se- 
quences may not be without interest. 

First : That of the five European nations that un- 
dertook, in a spirit of rivalry, in the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries, to colonise the Western Hemisphere, 
Great Britain alone now shares with the United States, 
in American aft'airs, a position of important political re- 
sponsibility toward the rest of the world. 

Second: That with the elimination of France from 
North America by conquest and voluntary cession respec- 
tively, and by the further practical elimination of Spain 
through the successful revolts of her American Colonies 
in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the countries 
of the Western Flemisphere ceased to be subject to a 
change of sovereignty as the result of European wars, 
and this accomplished fact was announced to the world 
by the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine. 



Third: That this Doctrine owed, nevertheless, its 
continuous vitality to the readiness of Great Britain to 
join forces v^ith the United States in its defense, for 
without the backing of the British fleet the United States 
would have been powerless to resist any considerable 
European coalition such as was threatened by the Holy 
Alliance. 

Fourth : That the alignment of political and eco- 
nomic forces in both Europe and America during the 
nineteenth century thus brought the United States and 
Great Britain into close alliance as against the rest of the 
world, so far at least as the Western Hemisphere was 
concerned, though constantly engaged in bickerings and 
disputes as between themselves. 

Fifth: That in view of their actual and potential 
pre-eminence as commercial and industrial nations, and 
from a desire to advance the cause of civilisation on lines 
peculiarly adapted to the promotion of their own activi- 
ties and interests, combined with a sense of responsi- 
bility toward the world at large as joint guardians of the 
Western Hemisphere, the United States and Great Britain 
concluded, in 1850, the so-called Clayton-Bulwer treaty. 

Sixth : That this treaty distinctly provided for an 
unfortified strip of artificial neutral sea between the 
Atlantic and Pacific oceans to be open to the whole 
world, as well as to themselves, on absolutely equal 
terms, in times both of peace and war, the canal 
having been conceived exclusively as a peaceful com- 
mercial water-way to be created for the "benefit of man- 
kind", as was stated in so many words in Article VI 
of the treaty. 

Seventh : That as a guarantee of good faith in this 
their declared purpose, both the high contracting parties 
agreed to use their best endeavors to induce the other 
nations of the world to enter with them into similar 
treaties for the neutralisation of the canal and for abso- 



lute equality in its use, or, in diplomatic language to 
"adhere" to the Anglo-American treaty. 

Eighth: That within fifty years from the ratifica- 
tion of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, and before the con- 
struction of the Panama Canal had been undertaken by 
the Government of the United States, there occurred the 
following events of such transcendent importance as to 
entirely alter not only the relations of the United States 
and Great Britain toward each other, but also their re- 
spective relations toward the rest of the world. 

1. As the result of the outcome of our Civil War, 
followed by an unexampled industrial and commercial 
expansion which included our Pacific coast, and as the 
result also of our Spanish AA^ar, the United States, for 
the first time in its history, became a powerful consoli- 
dated nation to be politically and economically reckoned 
w^th in both hemispheres. 

2. The unexpected appearance on the scene of a 

united Germany in the form of an ambitious and actually 
and potentially aggressive military and naval empire, 
naturally seeking territorial and commercial expansion on 
both land and sea, necessarily at the expense of her rivals, 
whomsoever they might be. 

3. The appearance of Japan as a world power in the 
Far East bordering on the Pacific. 

4. The abrupt termination, through President 
Cleveland's Venezuela message in 1895, of the joint 
protectorate of the United States and Great Britain over 
the Western Hemisphere, and the assumption of that 
role by the United States alone to the exclusion of all 
other Powers. 

Ninth : That with these developments before their 
eyes the American people became restive under the 
terms of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, and regarded the 
first draft of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty as a surrender 
of their rights inasmuch as it still proposed to regard the 



canal as a strip of neutral sea, and not as a part of their 
crucial coast line, and therefore, as such, entitled to forti- 
fication to the same extent as any other part of their 
territory. 

Tenth : That the first draft of the Hay-Pauncefote 
treaty was therefore rejected by the Senate, but, at the 
time of the negotiation of the final treaty, the relations of 
the United States and Great Britain were of a peculiarly 
friendly nature, largely as the result of Great Britain's 
attitude at the time of the Venezuela crisis, and later 
during the period of our Spanish War, and that this 
friendly relation in the hands of two such men as Mr. 
Hay and Lord Pauncefote was bound to create a situa- 
tion which made conciliation on our part a natural out- 
come of Great Britain's consent to annul the Clayton- 
Bulwer treaty, and then permit, without protest, the for- 
tification of the canal. 

Eleventh : That the result was the present treaty, 
ratified in December 1901, wherein, both in letter and 
in spirit are incorporated both the ''general principle" and 
the specific terms of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty as to 
entire equality in the use of the canal by all natrons, 
(in accordance with the Suez Canal rules adopted in 1888) 
the United States by historical sequence and reasonable 
interpretation included, minus only the non-fortification 
clause of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, and minus also the 
clause wherein other nations were to be invited to 
"adhere" to the treaty. 



In view then of the above facts and conclusions it is 
submitted that Congress should either entirely repeal the 
present Canal Tolls Act, or so modify it as to be satis- 
factory to Great Britain, or, failing that, should submit 
the whole subject to arbitration. Should the latter course 
be adopted and an award be made against us, as it pre- 
sumably would be (for the business of arbitrators is to 



fairly interpret the written contract and not invade the 
domain of economic and racial evolution, which is the 
province of war) there will then be time for American 
public opinion, after carefully weighing the arguments 
on both sides, to come to a conclusion as to whether 
it is better to insist upon the abrogation of the present 
Hay-Pauncefote treaty and the substitution therefor of 
one that may more nearly appeal to its sense of justice, 
or to accept the conditions created by the present treaty, 
not forgetting that in the rapid evolution of international 
relations the time may not be far distant when we may 
be only too anxious to avail ourselves of the friendship 
and good wall of Great Britain, especially in view of the 
complications that may well arise with the changed 
economic conditions that will ensue throughout the world 
upon the opening of the Panama Canal. 

And further let it not be forgotten by those so 
recently elected to the highest national executive and 
legislative positions of authority, upon whom will pre- 
sumably rest the responsibility of further negotiations, 
that American public opinion, as daily voiced in the 
columns of the responsible press of the country, sees in 
the interpretation of the present treaty no paltry and 
sordid question of the tolls of the canal, but rather a ques- 
tion wherein are involved the dignity, integrity, honor, 
and good faith of the United States. And beyond all that 
can be plainly discerned the further all important fact 
that upon the continued solidarity of the English-speak- 
ing world, conceived in the loftiest spirit of international 
good will, rests, in superlative degree, the future orderly 
progress of the world at large in the paths of civilization 
and of peace. 

SAMUEL L. PARRISH. 



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